Controlled environment facilities, such as prison facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, and camps, often implement a certain amount of control with respect to various activities involving residents thereof. For example, communications in or out of such controlled environment facilities may be allowed, restricted, interrupted, redirected, monitored, and/or recorded for some or all residents for security reasons. Access to specific areas of controlled environment facilities may also be tightly controlled for some or all residents. Often, controlled environment facilities may place different limitations on residents associated therewith with respect to a plurality of activities. Accordingly, controlled environment facilities must be operable to identify the residents in order to effectively control such activities.
In a prison facility, for example, phone calls to and from inmates are typically tightly controlled. Accordingly, various call processing systems have been implemented through which inmate calls into and out of a prison facility are allowed, restricted, interrupted, redirected, monitored, and/or recorded. Such call processing systems generally comprise a number of ports through which telephone trunks of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are coupled to analog telephone lines associated with telephone terminals disposed in inmate accessible areas of the prison facility. Before one of the telephone terminals disposed in inmate accessible areas of the prison facility are placed in communication with the PSTN, logic of the call processing system will make a validation determination with respect to whether the call should be connected, such as to determine if an inmate making or accepting a call is allowed phone privileges, if calls are allowed at the time of the call, if calls are allowed to or from the particular telephone terminal, etcetera.
Most prison facilities employ call validation methods which rely on the use of a personal identification number (PIN) to identify an individual, such as an inmate, and determine if a call is allowed or not. A call processing system in association with a prison facility prompts an inmate attempting a call to enter his PIN number, either before or after the telephone number is dialed. The PIN number allows the call processing system to identify the inmate and determine if the desired telephone call should be connected. A problem with utilizing a PIN number to identify an inmate for call validation purposes is that a PIN number may be easily traded, sold or stolen within a prison facility. In this way, an inmate may evade calling restrictions placed on him by the prison facility by utilizing another inmate's PIN number. Accordingly, there is a potential for harassment with calls being made to restricted numbers (e.g., victims, witnesses, judges, etcetera), the coordination of external/internal illegal business operations from within the facility, gang activity being coordinated from within facilities, riots or other activities being coordinated within and between facilities, and/or the general loss of command and control by facility leadership. In addition to posing a serious security risk, calls placed by inmates utilizing PIN numbers other than their own reduce the effectiveness of a facility's investigatory process. For example, even when a call posing a security risk is monitored or recorded by the facility, the inmate responsible for the security violation might escape identification and punishment by placing the call using another inmate's PIN number. Furthermore, a wrong inmate could be identified as the guilty party and penalized.